Three Classic French Films Coming Up From Olive Films in October
Posted August 4, 2012 12:15 AM by Webmaster
Olive Films have added three classic French films to their October slate: Gérard Oury's Le cerveau a.k.a The Brain (1969), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bourvil and David Niven, Denys de La Patelličre's Un taxi pour Tobrouk a.k.a Taxi for Tobruk (1960), starring Hardy Krüger, Lino Ventura and Maurice Biraud, and Henri Verneuil's Cent mille dollars au soleil a.k.a Greed in the Sun (1964), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Lino Ventura and Reginald Kernan. Street date for all three is October 30th.
The Brain
A tongue-in-cheek caper film with more twists and turns than a rural Oregon highway. David Niven plays The Brain, so named because it was he who mapped out the British Great Train Robbery. Now The Brain plans to lift a fortune in NATO money, which is being shipped by train from France to Belgium. Complicating matters are a pair of free-lance thugs (Jean-Paul Belmondo and Bourvil), who hope to steal The Brain's plans and claim the money for themselves. A plot device derived from The Lavender Hill Mob involves a 50-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty. An amusing closing-credits bit caps this exhilarating exercise.
Taxi for Tobruk
In the summer of 1942, four French commandos participating in a raid on Tobruk blow up a gasoline depot in the North African desert, suffering the loss of their truck and commanding officer. They set out on foot to join the Allied forces 400 miles away in El Alamein. After one day in the vast scorching desert, they capture a German patrol car, taking the sole survivor, a young Afrika Korps captain, Ludwig von Stegel, as their prisoner. Relations between the commandos and the German are naturally strained, especially because one commando, Samuel, is a Jew, but as they pass the days in a common ordeal of survival demanding trust and cooperation, hostilities fade into a reluctant but real camaraderie.
Greed in the Sun
At a trucking company in northern Africa, young Hans Steiner is assigned to drive a new truck from Morocco to Nigeria. Unknown to him and the other drivers, the truck contains guns and ammunition to be used in a border war. Rocco, a veteran driver, learns that the cargo is valuable, and with his girl friend, Pepa, he hijacks the truck and continues toward Nigeria. Meanwhile, Castigliano, the head of the company, offers Hans and Hervé, another driver, a reward to go after Rocco and Pepa. After hundreds of miles of desert roads and narrow mountain passes, Hervé and Hans finally catch up with the hijacked vehicle.
